Linda Richardson - Changing the Sales Conversation

Copyright 2014 by Linda Richardson. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-182495-8
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In memory of my beloved husband Paul, who gave so much more to my company than his name.
He inspired me to start and build Richardson and write all of my books. He remains my strength.

Theres no better way to learn about people in depthto get to know their every move, to understand how they think, or to predict what they will do nextthan to compete against them. For many years, and with dozens of prospective clients, Linda Richardson and I were fierce competitors. Often from an initial list of eight or so contenders, she and I were almost always the last two standing. Whenever I heard that she was one of the finalists for a project where I was in the running, I knew that it would be tough; whenever she wasnt on the list I breathed a sigh of relief. We regarded each other with that unique combination of respect and visceral competitiveness that salespeople everywhere reserve for the one competitor who keeps them up at night. After a competitive sale, when I did a winloss analysis, the feedback from clients was depressingly similar: Linda Richardson is creative, shes smart, she knows what shes talking about, she has new ideas, she thinks. By definition, of course, clients are always right, so all I could do was hope that once in a while they might add, but you do all that too, and better.

In the days when we were first going head to head against each other, there wasnt a lot of creativity or new thinking happening amongst sales training vendors. The average competitor offered the standard range of techniques that today seem so simplistic: objection handling, features and benefits, open and closed questions, and, of course, closing techniques. These ideas had been minimally repackaged from the early work of writers such as E. K. Strong in the 1920s. Fifty years later they were looking distinctly tired. Linda was one of the first people in the sales training world to realize that the old ideas were not enough. Coming from very different backgrounds, she and I were amongst the early innovators in the field who recognized that the new selling was about solutions, not about products; it was about needs, not about features.

This new thinking, variously called Consultative Selling, Solutions Selling, and Client-Centered Selling, was to change the sales world. It was a major step forward in terms of sophistication. Clients, not products, became the center of the sales effort. Opening durable, long-term relationships replaced the old focus on closing one-off deals. Understanding clients became more important than persuading them. We were enthusiastic missionaries for the new selling, and each of us was able to document some dramatic changes in sales performance in the companies that implemented our ideas. We read each others works and learned from each other, gratefully.

Bit by bit, company by company, the new client needbased selling moved from being a revolutionary challenge to becoming the established wisdom. Nobody today would think of going back to the simplistic and manipulative techniques that dominated selling before the consultative revolution.

In a curious kind of way, history is now repeating itself. The sales revolution, which Linda played such an important role in popularizing, is itself under attack from new concepts, new technologies, and new client demands. The ideas that originally put her in the fore-front of fresh thinking are themselves starting to look tired. Most people would decide that this would be a good time to bow out, having made their decisive contribution. But Linda Richardson, as her best-in-class clients will tell you, is not most people. Over the years, she has consistently renewed herself and evolved her thinking. She has remained at the cutting edge of selling, as her new book, Changing the Sales Conversation, so clearly shows. This is no mean feat. Selling is now changing more profoundly and more quickly than it has at any time in history.

There seems to be general agreement on what is driving these changes. One clear factor is the rising power of the client. Armed with sophisticated purchasing techniques and given more vendor choices than ever before, clients are not only in the drivers seat but also commandeering turbocharged juggernauts with sufficient power to crush all but the strongest and most skilled providers. The Internet has given clients omniscient access to information about their available choices. We are in a world where